TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards celebrate 21st with new awards and new look

The TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards turn 21 this year, and to celebrate this milestone, it’s received an oversized key, downed a
yardie, taken a good hard look at itself and emerged into adulthood with
a snazzy new ’Everything Marketing‘ brand and eight new categories.

The
awards are owned by Tangible Media, which, in conjunction with the
Marketing Association and Image Centre Group’s enagagement agency
&some, have given things a big shake this year up in an effort to
acknowledge the complexities of the modern marketing landscape and
position the awards as more inclusive and accessible.

Six
of the new awards acknowledge specific business sectors: Technology,
Financial & Banking, Utilities/Communications,
Lifestyle/Travel/Leisure, Automotive and Sponsorship, which aims to
acknowledge a very important ingredient in the marketing mix that isn’t
often formally recognised.

Most Authentic Brand has been modified
to Marketing Leadership and Sustainability and Emerging Business/New
Brand have joined the Judges’ Choice category, along with new Insight
Award, which rewards the most inspiring use of customer insights. The
winning entrant may, for example, have used feedback or research data to
optimise marketing performance, designed a product or service in
fulfillment of a customer need, increased customer loyalty and
retention, enhanced overall customer satisfaction, or maximised
profitability.

The final new award, the Marketing Excellence
Award, aims to acknowledge long-term strategy and sustained success, so
the winning entrant needs to demonstrate how adopting a marketing
strategy for a period of three years or more drove business growth in
their organisation.

&some’s Mike Pepper says the new branding
and collateral aims to give the awards a more professional feel and the
new positioning is based on best practice from around the world.

“If
you look at all the other awards, they have a very strong brand
identity. Each year the theme might change but the award has an enduring
position and brand.”

And that’s where the umbrella strategy of
‘Everything Marketing’, which he hopes will be much more than a one
-year thing and still allows for different themes to be implemented,
came from.

As the breadth of marketing discipline increases and
elements like data, design and digital become more important, Pepper
says the awards aim to enable a wider range of businesses to enter and
showcase their work within the context of their industry.

They
also represent a shift towards recognising marketers who have helped
move the industry forward in new ways. And this is in keeping with the
MA’s manifesto to add some gravitas to the profession and ensure more
marketers get to sit around the boardroom table.

“Increasingly,
marketers are being asked to find ways to bring consumers into the
business,” MA’s chief executive Sue McCarty says. “They’re not just at
the end of the line any more. They’re all the way through the line. And
the awards celebrate the strategy behind the ideas and recognise the
crucial role marketing plays in modern businesses, right across the
customer lifecycle.”

Entries are now open and must be submitted by
5pm on Friday 18 May. Winners will be announced on August 30 at
Auckland’s Langham Hotel.

&Some’s executive director Mike
Hutcheson emphasises the need for agencies to help their clients compile
their entries if possible, because, besides the opportunity to bask in
the reflected glory of a win, the Marketing Awards bring a particularly
unique offering to the awards circuit (check out a few tips for crafting
winning entries here).

“Other
awards ceremonies have a tendency to reward individual ads or creative
executions,” he says. “And while there’s certainly a place for that,
what the Marketing Awards do is celebrate the strategy that enables
these ideas to be born.”

And they also celebrate the the fact that
whether it be new packaging, an ad campaign, a brand extension, a
sponsorship, or a digital feedback loop for the call centre, all of it
is guided—and paid for—by the country’s marketers.